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Archive for March, 2009

I have been reading an article in the April 6 issue of Time magazine. I don’t know that this one has hit the news stands yet, but if it has it is well worth the time to read it. The article is entitled, “the end of excess.”

There is one paragraph that says what I was trying to say yesterday. “It’s time to ratchet back our wild nad crazy grasshopper side and get in touch with our inner ant, to be more artisan-enterpriser and less prospector-speculator, more heroic greatness generation and less self-indulgent baby boomer, to return from Oz to Kansas, to become fully reality- based again.”

We can get out of this financial mess and we can have the life we want and love, but it is time to get back to basics and yes, basics are a very good thing.

How can you be more artisan-enterpriser? What does that mean to you? How can you build your business as an artisan with the real basics of integrity, fairness, and with a spirit of helpfulness behind what you are doing? It is going to take real change and for awhile change can be painful.

Opportunity is never lost
It goes To Those Ready to Accept It!

Carolyn

Ice Breakers
Contact Lens

The teenager lost a contact lens while playing basketball in his driveway. After a fruitless search, he went inside and told his mother the lens was nowhere to be found.

Undaunted, she went outside, and in a few minutes, she
returned with the lens in her hand.

“How did you manage to find it, Mom?” the teenager asked.

“We weren’t looking for the same thing,” she replied. “You
were looking for a small piece of plastic. I was looking for
$150.”

Thought for Today:
“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
– Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Tips and Techniques

I know it is a story that is supposed to make you smile, but with all that is going on, I believe that it can really teach a very good lesson. What are you looking for and what do you really want to do with your business. We have some difficult choices to make if we are going to keep our business alive and well. Take about a half hour right now or as soon as you can and list some of the things you can do to be more artisan and enterprising in your business. Think about it, are you looking for a piece of plastic or $150.00?

Life certainly can get very interesting at times, don’t you think? There is so much talk these days about the ecomomy and the state of affairs in this country and the world.

It certainly does prove just how intertwined our world really is. This economic situation is world wide. Why does something like this happen? Why does it happen?

Just like the Ponzi scheme unethical business practices can only last so long before the bottom drops out of everything. Just what is a Ponzi scheme? Essentially it is a payment plan whereby the new entrants pay those that came into the plan earlier. What makes it illegal is there is no product.

What made the Madoff scheme last as long as it did? It was built on a false product, paper and stocks that didn’t really exist. It was well hidden behind what appeared to be ligitimate.

Why do people fall for schemes and scams? That really is an easy one to answer. People, yes all of us want to believe that everyone is good and have our interests at heart. There is a strong desire for money you don’t have to work for. You can only trade so many hours of real work for pay so people are looking to “leverage” their money instead of their time. The risk is high, the time to honestly learn how to do it can be very long. The rewards can also be very high.

Having a dream is a good thing, I highly recommend it, but it always has been and always will be – buyer beware. We have just as much right to fail as we have to succeed and have to accept when there is failure there is something more to learn.

Opportunity is never lost
It goes To Those Ready to Accept It!

Carolyn

Ice Breakers

Scratch

A young bride was scouring the aisles of the supermarket.
Up and down each aisle she went, then started over again.

The store manager noticed this and went over to her.
“Can I help you find something, miss?” he asked.

“t’s Mrs.!”, she said proudly, “I just got married.”

“Congratulations, ” said the manager. “What can I help you find?”

“Scratch,” she replied.

“Scratch?” he asked, “Is that a new cleanser or something?”

“No silly,” she replied brightly. “My husband told me that
his mother made everything from scratch, so I need to find
some!”

We are nearly in the last week of the month, are you on target for getting your goals accomplished?

If you have to say, “I don’t know.” or “no” or even, ‘I don’t even know what I am doing anymore.” then maybe you should not even try to be in business for your self. Being in business does take planning and more important it takes an execution of that plan to the results you have set out for yourself.

Now comes the biggest question of all, do you even know what you want your business to do? I know, you just want to make money. And, you can’t understand you have designed your web site. It isn’t very good, but you have a website. You have found eBooks that you purchased for a few dollars with a promise that you can resell them and make a fortune, but you haven’t sold a single one. You tell yourself, “if other people have done it, why can’t I?”

There is much to learn to make a living on the web, but it is possible to learn what there is and it is possible to earn an income, but you have to do the work.

Opportunity is never lost
It goes To Those Ready to Accept It!

Carolyn

Ice Breakers
Lost Cell Phone

When a customer left his cell phone in my store,
I scrolled through his saved numbers, stopped
at “Mom” and pushed Send.

His mother answered and I told her what happened.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

A few minutes later, the cell phone rang.

It was “Mom.”

“Martin,” she said. “You left your cell phone at the convenience store.”

Thought for Today:
“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.” –Margaret Thatcher

Tips and Techniques

Be totally honest with yourself. Let’s write some goals shall we.

1. Before I die, I want to ….

2. By the end of this year I want to have …

3. During the month of April I must …

Once you do this, you can begin to plan how, but you must must must know the what before you can begin.

We all have choices every day. But those choices every day will involve two things. Yes, just two.

Is this worth my time to do?

How do I finance this?

Everyone has a different way to answer these questions. We would like to hear from you. How do you answer the questions. I know it is spoken about every day on every news channel about our economy and how our people in this country are no more than three paychacks away from being homeless.

I look at the situation in Wilmington, OH. One business, DHL went out of business and it literally shut down an entire town.

I look at the devastation that followed the hurricaines. Are people rebuilding and how quickly?

We have a lot to be greatful for even though our country is facing some pretty tough times, but you know what we (Americans) rose to the challenges in the past adn we will rise to the challenges again. Why can I say that with such conviction? Because we are a country of optomistic people. We look at challenges and see the opportunity that is still there. Give up and give in. I don’t think so.

Opportunity is never lost
It goes To Those Ready to Accept It!

Carolyn

Ice Breakers
Loan

I ran short of money while visiting my brother, so he loaned me $50. After I returned home, I wrote him a short letter every couple of weeks, enclosing a $5 check in each one. A couple of months into this, he called me one evening just to tell me how much enjoyed the letters,
regardless of the money. I had never written regularly before.

Eventually I sent off a letter that contained the last $5, completing my repayment of the loan.

The next week I found an envelope in my mailbox. It was from my brother. Inside was a check for another $50.

Thought for Today:
“We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.”. -Arthur Schopenhauer

Tips and Techniques

Can you look at a problem and see the opportunity? It doesn’t happen overnight and there are times that it takes time. It does take a good hard look and it does take making a few decisions. Our grandparents did it when they made it through the depression, we can do it now.

They saw the opportunities that took us from the horse and buggy to the moon. What will you and this generation over come and where we will be when they talk about the great meltdown of 2008?

I have been thinking a lot about time lately especially since I have lost so much of it over the last couple of weeks. Being sick takes more than just energy. It is a thief. Time is such an important thing, but more than just a thing it can seem to be a real thinking, breathing entity.

What is your relationship with time? Do you control it? Or, does it control you? If you were a clock watcher in school I can almost guarantee that you are a clock watcher now. Why do you watch the clock? Have you ever given it much thought? Do you watch the clock because you have to be somewhere at a particular time? Do you watch the clock because you have deadlines?

If you work with billable hours, then time certainly is money to you.

Time is not a renewable resource. Once the time is spent it is gone you can never get it back again. Once the minutes you have in your day are used there is no such thing as a do-over.

Many of us will try to make up the time by staying up and losing sleep. Students will try to make up study time by cramming long hours. Are they honestly learning anything when they do this?

What is the value of a minute? Ask the man who has missed the train.

What is the value of an hour? Can you name an hour that cost you a penny? Can you name an hour that cost you the life of someone very prescious to you? Do you know the value of your working hours? You should because only you can put a value on them.

Opportunity is never lost
It goes To Those Ready to Accept It!

Carolyn

Ice Breakers

Tattoo

I thought I wanted a tattoo, so I had a friend come with me to the tattoo parlor.

As I nervously paused outside the door, I noticed the T had slipped off their sign. Now it read “Creative ouch.”

Thought for Today:
“Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” -Susan Ertz

Tips and Techniques
Your time is valuable use it wisely. If you are working on line, take the number of hours you spend on your business then divide it up by:

I think one of the biggest questions that gets asked of a cousultant is, “how do I get traffic to my site?” Most folks know that it takes traffic and lots of it to make sales. The answer is to promote your site. Once the site is up and running, then better than 50% of your time should be promoting it. Yep, for every hour you work your business 1/2 hour must be spent promoting it.

There is a lot search engine optomization.
There is a lot to keywords and meta tags
There is a lot to layout and design that will bring people to the site and get them there.

Yes, it is like putting all of the pieces of a puzzle together. So how do you learn exactly what to do, when and how? How can you do it better or even easier?

One of the places that I recommend to my clients is http://www.selfpromotion.com Robert has been on line for a very long time now. On the front page of his site he gives you his 12 step plan. You can use everything on the site for 4 weeks free and then he even leaves it to you to pay what you want. Do you have stuff to learn? Can you learn it at self promotion, well let me tell you that’s where I started and keep going back.

Opportunity is never lost
It goes To Those Ready to Accept It!

Carolyn

Ice Breakers
Indian Sixth Sense

Two cowboys came upon an Indian lying on his stomach with his ear to the ground. One of the cowboys stops and says to the other, “You see that Indian?”

“Yeah,” says the other cowboy.

“Look,” says the first one, “He’s listening to the ground. He can hear things for miles in any direction.”

Just then the Indian looks up. “Covered wagon,” he says, “About two miles away. Have two horses, one brown, one white. Man, woman, child, furniture in wagon …”

“Incredible!” says the cowboy to his friend. “This Indian knows how far away they are, how many horses, what color, what’s in the wagon –just amazing!”

The Indian looks up and says, “Ugh … not amazing …
wagon ran … over me … 30 minutes ago!”

“When you look up names in the telephone directory and call them cold, with no earthly reason or “in” other than the fact that you want a sale, you insult the person your’re calling. More than that, you might do irreparable harm; you might alienate a person who one day would have done business with you.” Les Dane

The rule applies to email as well. Unsolicited email is as unwelcomed as calling people out of the phone book.

Look at the above paragraph carefully, what would take a cold call and make it very warm? What can you do to honestly flatter a person instead of insult him.

Well to begin with if the internetion is to merely make the sale all will not go well, especially on the web. You more than ever have to give to get but the Internet has made it more than easy to do just that.

Create a product you can give away
Make the download page where you can give it away
Ask permission to contact the person again

It is a winning formula.

Opportunity is never lost
It goes To Those Ready to Accept It!

Carolyn

Ice Breakers

What is a Grandparent?

(Taken from papers written by a class of 8-year-olds)

Grandparents are a lady and a man who have no little children of their own. They like other people’s.

A grandfather is a man, & a grandmother is a lady!

Grandparents don’t have to do anything except be there when we come to see them. They are so old they shouldn’t play hard or run. It is good if they drive us to the shops and give us money.

When they take us for walks, they slow down past things like pretty leaves and caterpillars.

They show us and talk to us about the colors of the flowers and also why we shouldn’t step on ‘cracks.’

They don’t say, ‘Hurry up.’ Usually grandmothers are fat but not too fat to tie your shoes.

They wear glasses and funny underwear.

They can take their teeth and gums out.

Grandparents don’t have to be smart.

They have to answer questions like ‘Why isn’t God married?’ and ‘How come dogs chase cats?’

When they read to us, they don’t skip. They don’t mind if we ask for the same story over again.

Everybody should try to have a grandmother, especially if you don’t have television because they are the only grownups who like to spend time with us.

They know we should have snack time before bed time, and they say prayers with us and kiss us even when we’ve acted bad.

Grandpa is the smartest man on earth! He teaches me good things, but I don’t get to see him enough to get as smart as him!

Thought for Today:
“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tips and Techniques

Relationshipping on the Internet is no different, get yourself known before you try to sell anything to anyone.